Skill Development in the Hospitality Sector - Opportunities & Concerns

Over the past few decades, the Indian Diaspora has formed a significant portion of immigrant populations in western countries such as the United States and Canada. With a win, though, it sought to be the most professional opportunity for qualified Indians; internal customers. Technically the geographical migration of labor from one country to another is known as the brain drain. They take with them the skills and knowledge that they have acquired in their home country. Draining their services contributing towards the development of the country; that promises a far higher standard of living in return for their skills.

To accelerate the development of tourism human capital in the country, the emphasis is laid on Skill development schemes by the Government. The objectives of the scheme are:

I. To provide vocational training to school leavers, existing workers, ITI graduate’ etc. to improve their employability by optimally utilizing the infrastructure available in Govt., private institutions and the Industry. Existing skills of the persons can also be tested and certified under this scheme.

II. To build capacity in the area of development of competency standards, course curricula, learning material and assessment standards in the country.

We have a difficult group, but an interesting one to handle in the Indian Hospitality Industry. The 21st century has witnessed a change in the brain drain pattern wherein the Indian Employers have started to do everything to retain talent. These companies gained the reputation of global hub to absorb India’s skilled labor in. Secondly, it is important to work in an environment that offers a tremendous scope of growth at all levels- personal, professional, social and Indian economy. Industry is hopeful for future growth, thereby creating employment opportunities for the trained or ready to deliver service staff. The hospitality industry is evolving to newer shores customized to understand the various perspectives of the work force that encounters the competitive challenge with performance management system and customers’ satisfaction.

The seasonality of the business has some strategic experiments and results that confuse the management to employ the right number of employees in hotels. This is one of the main reasons why it is the need of the hour as a company’s responsibility to make sure that the bonafide manpower is aware of what is going on in the firm and do their job.

The manpower situation in the Indian Hospitality industry suffers high attrition and low on retention. The current supply of skilled and trained manpower is estimated to be a very dismal of 8.92 % to the total requirement as per study carried out by Ministry of tourism. The study anticipates widening gap towards 2016-17. Sources of attrition to be addressed and retention strategies practiced through Customer Satisfaction, Motivation – a means to enhance productivity, Training needs, Married to the job, Understanding customer’s righteousness, Festivity enhanced team spirit, Formal customer satisfaction measures, Re-skilling HR through technology, Bridging HR through internal certification courses, Tutoring HR towards customer- oriented approach (Mathur, Sharma & Bhutani, 2011), Combating stress at the workplace , Internship impetus, Full-time engagement , Encouraging innovativeness, Intra company networking is essential, Decentralization encourages experimentation, Frequent get-togethers of HRD staff and periodic surveys is useful, Process orientation should be strengthened, Entrepreneurship for smaller organizations, Strengthening HRD service sector – Indian Hospitality.

Taking the self-assurance, self-assignment, self-assessment test you can draw to the conclusion that you are partly competing with the system through your talented edge towards complete set-up of endeavors and partly making your own domain, or presence in the operational design to enhance the goodwill and brand value along with better industrial health and professional hospitality concern; thereby reduce the chances of attrition understanding trained skilled, semi skilled and to-be-skilled manpower as a resource in a properly executed quality standard to influence public perception, thereby building a Sustainable incredible India.